Jiang Lin shook his head. “Of course I can't do it alone.”
“Then why are you talking nonsense?” Cole's voice already carried a trace of impatience. “Just stay put and wait for us to—”
“But it's not a hassle,” Jiang Lin interrupted him. His tone was still earnest and his expression innocent, as if he completely failed to register the impatience in Cole's voice. “And the efficiency isn't low either.”
Cole was taken aback. “What do you mean?”
Jiang Lin raised his hand and pointed casually toward the dozen or so cultists in the clearing.
His gesture was relaxed, as if he were merely pointing out directions or introducing something.
“Lord Cole, look. Aren't all these people right in front of us the perfect, ready-made sacrifices? Their strength isn't bad—ranging from the 3rd-Rank to the 4th-Rank, and we even have two 4th-Rank peaks. If we sacrifice them all together, the feedback of power we receive will definitely be much stronger than if we just captured a few ordinary villagers.”
The clearing fell dead silent for two full breaths.
Then, someone let out a short, dry laugh, sounding as if they had choked.
The gray-robed man standing at the edge of the crowd stared at Jiang Lin as if looking at a lunatic who had suddenly snapped.
Cole slowly turned to face Jiang Lin directly, his right hand already resting on the hilt of the dagger at his waist.
“Has your brain gone soft?” his voice was incredibly low, carrying a dangerous edge. “Do you know what you are saying?”
Jiang Lin's expression didn't change. He remained earnest and innocent, looking exactly like a young man who was sincerely offering a helpful suggestion.
“I do. The sacrificial manual states very clearly that the stronger the sacrifice, the better the results. These colleagues of ours are quite strong. Sacrificing a single 4th-Rank peak is worth capturing dozens of ordinary villagers. If we sacrifice everyone here, our harvest from this trip will multiply several times over.”
Cole stared at him for a few breaths before slowly drawing his dagger.
“You're looking for trouble.”
The two 4th-Rank peak members beside him had also gripped their weapons, glaring at Jiang Lin with hostile eyes.
The others finally reacted as well. Some took a few steps back to distance themselves from Jiang Lin.
Some looked shocked, while others had expressions that practically screamed, Is this guy out of his mind?
“Drake, do you know what the consequences will be if these words reach the deacon's ears?” the gray-robed man finally spoke. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried a solemn weight. “If you are trying to test us...”
“I'm not testing you,” Jiang Lin interrupted him again. “I'm serious.”
The moment the words left his mouth, he raised his right hand and spread his fingers.
Golden light erupted from his palm, bursting into a shower of floating light particles that rained down upon the dozen or so figures in the center of the clearing.
He didn't hold back his magic essence this time. The 5th-Rank early stage liquid holy light magic essence surged within his body, pushing the range and efficiency of the Jetting Aura to unprecedented heights.
The light particles traveled incredibly fast, touching the nearest people almost the exact instant Jiang Lin raised his hand.
Cole bore the brunt of it.
He was just about to charge forward with his dagger when his body suddenly froze.
An indescribable urge suddenly welled up from the depths of his abdomen, as if an invisible hand had violently gripped his bowels and then let go, only to grip them again and let go, repeating in rapid succession.
“You...”
He managed only a single word before his face completely contorted.
The dagger slipped from his hand and clattered to the ground. He doubled over, clutching his stomach with both hands, curling into a tight ball as muffled groans escaped his throat.
The other cultists were in no better shape.
Some fell to their knees on the spot, some leaned against tree trunks taking desperate deep breaths to suppress the urge, and others collapsed directly onto the ground, their expressions shifting from anger to confusion, and then from confusion to pure agony.
The gray-robed man was the quickest to react.
He rolled to the side the instant Jiang Lin raised his hand, evading the densest part of the light rain, but a few particles of light still landed on his shoulders and back.
His body shook violently, his knees buckled, and he dropped to one knee. Gritting his teeth, he looked up at Jiang Lin.
“You...”
He, too, was unable to finish a sentence.
Jiang Lin didn't spare them a second glance, walking straight toward the half-man-high altar in the center of the clearing.
He picked up the thin sacrificial manual from the ground, flipped to the page describing the complete ritual process, and scanned it quickly.
The rune patterns carved into the stone were already glowing faintly, a dark red light slowly flowing through the grooves of the runes.
Following the steps in the manual, Jiang Lin pressed his right hand into the depression at the top of the altar and injected a thread of magic essence into it.
The light on the surface of the altar suddenly brightened.
He flipped through the manual again, found the section for "activating the sacrifice," and chanted the twisted prayer word by word.
His pronunciation wasn't perfect, but it was clear enough.
As each syllable fell upon the rune patterns of the altar, it stirred a faint ripple of dark red light.
The ripples spread outward from the center of the altar, sweeping across the ground and washing over the bodies of the helpless cultists writhing on the ground.
Then, someone began to scream.
The sound was short and sharp, lasting only an instant before turning into a low, raspy wheeze squeezed from the depths of their throat.
Dark red light rose from their bodies like threads being unraveled, drifting strand by strand toward the altar.
Cole lay curled on the ground, his face deathly pale. He was still muttering curses under his breath, but his voice grew weaker and weaker.
The gray-robed man knelt nearby. He had stopped struggling, merely staring at Jiang Lin with a complex gaze, as if there was something he couldn't comprehend, or perhaps something he had suddenly realized.
The glow of the altar grew brighter and brighter, shifting from dark red to a glaring crimson.
The light extracted from the cultists gathered, surged, and condensed above the altar, ultimately forming a slowly rotating, dark red sphere of light.
Countless tiny points of light flickered within the sphere, each pulse sending an invisible ripple outward in all directions.
Jiang Lin stood before the altar, his golden eyes reflecting the rotating sphere of light, his face devoid of any expression.
He maintained his Space Perception at its maximum range, keeping everything in his surroundings under close monitoring.
No unusual auras approached, no patrol teams passed by, and no unexpected events occurred.
After continuing for about seven or eight minutes, the altar's light began to gradually recede.
The sphere of light shrank, condensed, and finally transformed into a slender, dark red beam of light that shot from the top of the altar into the night sky, vanishing into the horizon.
The rune patterns on the ground dimmed layer by layer, and the light on the altar's surface faded away.
Silence returned to the clearing.
The dozen or so cultists no longer moved. The dark red light had been completely drained from their bodies, leaving behind nothing but empty husks that looked as if all their life force had been sucked dry.
Jiang Lin withdrew his hand, closed the sacrificial manual, and placed it back on the ground.
He felt a faint, warm energy flow from the base of the altar into his body. It traveled slowly through his meridians before finally sinking into the depths of the Demon Lord Seed in his heart.
The power was identical to what he had felt when devouring the demon god statue on Planet Caeous, only purer and more condensed.
His total reserve of magic essence increased by another sliver.
He stood quietly in place for a moment, then squatted down to check each of the corpses one by one. After confirming that there was absolutely no life left in them, he used the purification reagent he found in Cole's pack to clean up the scene.
The reagent dripped onto the corpses, producing a faint sizzling sound. The bodies dissolved and evaporated at a visible rate, eventually leaving behind only small piles of grayish-white powder.
The night wind swept through the forest, blowing away the powder on the ground and scattering it into the darkness.
Under the effect of the reagent, the altar also gradually cracked and collapsed, turning into a pile of grayish-black rubble.
Jiang Lin took one last look at the clearing. After confirming that no traces were left behind, he turned and retraced his steps.
By the time the silhouette of Anvil Town loomed faintly in the morning mist, the horizon was already turning a pale white.
He returned to the small building in the church's side courtyard, pushed open the door, sat down on his narrow bed, and ran through the day's events in his mind.
Twelve cultists, all sacrificed.
The harvest was decent—better than his usual share of faith dividends, but not as good as the steady, continuous returns he got after modifying the demon god statue.
The disappearance of this team would inevitably attract the attention of the secret cult sooner or later.
But at least in the short term, no one would suspect him.
A newcomer who had only joined a few days ago goes out on a mission with an experienced team, only for the team to be wiped out while the newcomer goes missing—this was the most logical deduction.
He only needed to "return" at the right time with a plausible excuse.
For instance, getting lost, or encountering patrols from other factions and being scattered, or hiding in the mountains for a few days before finding his way back.
As Jiang Lin's figure vanished into the morning mist, the silhouette of Anvil Town's church gradually became clear against the skyline.
At the top of the pine tree beside the ruined altar, an extremely faint ripple of aura quietly emerged, as if a thin veil had been silently lifted.
It was a middle-aged man dressed in a worn, dark gray robe.
His face was so ordinary that he looked like any traveler one might come across on the road, with rough skin, slightly high cheekbones, and deep-set eyes. He looked like someone who spent years traveling in the wilderness, sleeping in the wind and dining on the dew.
But his eyes were different. They were dark brown, with faint, tiny glints of dark red light swirling deep within his pupils, resembling the gaze of a nocturnal beast sizing up its prey from the shadows.
He stood upon a pine branch, his body rising and falling slightly with the swaying of the branch, as if he had merged with the tree itself.
His aura was incredibly faint—so faint that even if someone stood three paces away and looked directly at him, they would only perceive a patch of shadow slightly darker than the surroundings.
This was the reason why Jiang Lin's Space Perception had failed to detect him at all.
The lining of his worn robe was sewn with a layer of rune netting woven from dark threads.
The patterns were as dense as spider silk. When activated, they would channel all his magic essence fluctuations and life force into an extremely narrow crack misaligned with real space.
This was not a concealment technique, but a state of temporarily "removing" oneself from the current space.
A 6th-Rank peak cultivation level, combined with this treasure that even high-tier perceivers would find difficult to detect.
This gave him more than enough confidence to lurk and observe any newly joined recruit without them sensing a thing.
He leaped silently down from the pine branch, landing beside the pile of cracked and collapsed altar ruins.
Squatting down, he pinched a bit of the grayish-white powder with his fingertips, brought it to his nose to sniff, then lowered his hand, his gaze sweeping over the entire clearing.
There were no signs of struggle on the ground. The cultists had barely put up any effective resistance before collapsing.
Aside from the gray-robed man rolling half a turn, but that was all.
“Bowel Strengthening...”
He murmured the words under his breath, his tone carrying an indescribable playfulness.
He had observed the entire process from the shadows.
From the moment Jiang Lin suggested sacrificing his colleagues, to him raising his hand to release those golden particles of light.
And then to the cultists' reaction as they instantly lost all combat capability upon being touched by those particles.
Followed by him opening the sacrificial manual, activating the altar, chanting the prayer, and completing the entire ritual.
He had seen every single step clearly, without missing a single detail.
What truly interested him was the attitude Jiang Lin displayed throughout the entire process.
From the moment he made the suggestion, this young man calling himself Drake had not shown the slightest sign of hesitation, wavering, or subsequent regret.
His tone had been earnest and innocent, as if he were sincerely proposing something completely normal, yet there was no real "innocence" in his eyes.
When those cultists began to scream, his expression hadn't flickered in the slightest.
When Cole curled on the ground cursing in a muffled voice, he hadn't even spared him a second glance.
When the gray-robed man looked at him with that realization in his eyes, he hadn't shown any emotional change either.
He had completed the ritual according to the steps in the manual, then disposed of the bodies, cleaned up the scene to ensure no traces remained, and finally turned and left calmly.
The entire process was like completing a pre-arranged daily chore that required no extra thought.
“Either he's a lunatic,” the 6th-Rank powerhouse in the worn robe muttered, standing in the clearing and gazing in the direction Jiang Lin had vanished, “or he's a natural fit for this path.”
In the secret cult's tenets, there was a principle he had agreed with long ago:
Talent can be compensated for through sacrifice, but temperament cannot be cultivated through any external means.
A timid, soft-hearted person would never amount to anything, no matter how much power they were given.
Because at critical moments, they would hesitate, waver, and let opportunities slip away, ultimately dragging themselves and those around them into the abyss.
On the other hand, someone who could ruthlessly strike down his own colleagues on his third day in the cult, and then proceed to clean up the subsequent traces in an orderly fashion without becoming smug or panicked—that was the exact kind of talent the secret cult truly needed.
But there was still one step left.
If this fellow named Drake turned tail and ran right now, fleeing the Twilight Kingdom out of fear that he couldn't account for killing a group of cultists...
Then it would prove he was merely a short-sighted opportunist who had the guts to play dirty but lacked the courage to face the consequences.
Such a person was only suited for hit-and-run banditry, not worth grooming.
...
Rate on N.U.
